About Liberalism – GraniteVoter.blog

Contract For Americans (10/10)

Living Wage – For Your Economic Present

They (the GOP) told us that the tax cuts were going to result in more money for workers.

They lied. I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Guess where the money went? A lot of stock buybacks and dividend hikes – meaning more money for the corporate owners. Before it was signed into law, various think tanks predicted that 12-13% of the ‘windfall’ would go to workers, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise that corporations would benefit. Compared to what happened, that would have been good. The reality? 3.3% of the tax cut windfall went to employees by one scorecard – $6B out of $177B.

Corporations never went to kindergarten so they don’t know how to share. So what can we do?

Gradually raise the minimum wage to $15. Companies that pay their people well have lower turnover, higher job satisfaction and lower expenses. In addition, putting more money in the hands of poorer people spurs economic expansion because they SPEND the money – they don’t stash it away in the Cayman Islands. The argument that a higher minimum wage results in more unemployment has been disproven these days in Seattle, and that’s nothing new as history has shown. Trumpanzees like Jordan Rachel say that a $15 minimum wage will make Taco Bell burritos $38. Well, New York City already has a $15 minimum wage and the burritos there are $1.89-$4.49.

Besides – if your company requires its workers to live below the poverty line and be eligible for federal and state welfare programs to feed them so that the owner can make a profit – that business shouldn’t exist.

But what about others? How about limiting the deductibility of executive compensation to a certain multiplier of the company’s average worker’s salary? Since 1965, the ratio of executive salary to worker’s salary has gone from 18 times a worker’s pay to 220 times a worker’s pay. By 2018, it was over 260x. The latest 2020 numbers show this has gotten to an obscene 351x! In Japan, while one meme says it’s 11x, it’s actually 67x. The US numbers are patently ridiculous. Let’s say, for round number’s sake, that we set a policy of 100x worker’s pay for executive pay. If a company wants to pay the executives more, they would have two choices. Either hike worker wages to raise the threshhold, or lose the deductibility of the excess compensation and pay the taxes on that money (in addition to the income taxes that the executive will pay).

“Trickle Down Economic Theory” doesn’t work. Thinking that a corporation will rain its largesse down to the people is thinking of the most naive kind. A corporation has no soul. You generate economic growth by people wanting to buy more goods and services. With more money, people buy more things – as opposed to stashing their money overseas.

Contract For Americans (9/10)

Social Security Reform – For Your Economic Future

In 2034, the Social Security Trust Fund’s surpluses will be exhausted. At that point, they will only be able to pay 76% of planned benefits. As of this writing, that’s 12 years from now. I’m supposed to retire in just over 7 years. If I live to be 72, I’ll be in the generation that sees this promise broken unless we do something. Life expectancy in the US is around 79 years.

So what can we do?

Well, there’s the “FICA cap”. What this means is that Social Security and Medicare taxes are only assessed on the first $147,000 of income (for 2022). After that, you “get a raise” in that FICA taxes are no longer collected. This only applies for ‘normal’ income. Anyone who gets their income from dividends or stock options (like the top 1%) doesn’t pay this tax on those ‘earnings’ at all.

If we removed the FICA cap, we could fund Social Security for another 60 years! That’s a powerful argument. Unfortunately, the latest proposal from Democrats only extends the “depletion date” by a few years. While extending benefits, the proposal only looks at “reapplying” the FICA tax on income over $400,000. In other words, income from $147,001 to $399,999 would still be FICA-tax-free. This is what happens when the President makes a promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning under $400,000. This is in sharp contrast to the cuts that Republicans have wanted to do.

Social Security has been the single-most successful anti-poverty program in the history of the country. It needs to be fixed. Eliminating the FICA cap is a good idea. If a person makes enough to hit the cap, it means they’ve paid their bills all year until that cap gives them a raise. There aren’t many places where making $150,000 has you “on the edge” tightening your belt until December rolls around.

Contract For Americans (8/10)

Constitutional Amendment – Corporations ARE NOT People

“Corporations and other artificial entities that are created by laws of the States and the Federal Government are not considered persons or citizens of the United States.” — my proposal for a 28th Amendment.

Corporations are not people. It’s as simple as that. I will not believe they’re people until Texas executes one.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision said that corporations have free speech rights. This has resulted in a flood of dark money corrupting our political process.

Then there was the very famous Hobby Lobby case which said a corporation actually had religious rights and could deny contraceptive coverage despite the mandate of the ACA that required helth insurance plans to cover contraception. This despite the fact that the 401(k) program that is available to management invests in and profits from companies that manufacture contraceptive drugs, including the abotifacents that Hobby Lobby’s owners INSISTED were the reason for denying health insurance coverage to their employees.

Hobby Lobby doesn’t go to church. The people who own the company do.

Corporations should not have “free speech” rights. The idea of them having “freedom of religion” is ludicrous.

They are not “people”. This should be obvious.

One major effect of this would be to get money out of politics. If corporations are not people and do not have ‘free speech’, they can be barred from donating to campaigns, PACs, buying political ad time, etc.

A Contract For Americans (7/10)

We’re Not Coming For Your Guns – Understanding the Second Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” – United States Constitution, 2nd Amendment.

“Back in the day”, ‘well-regulated’ meant ‘well-trained’ or ‘well-operating’, meaning you knew how to not only fire, but maintain your weapon. The “Militia” was anyone who was available to answer the call to arms (and responding to such a call was compulsory in many cases). The people were meant to have the right to own guns in that context.

But, just as the Constitution has provisions for for denying certain rights to people under certain conditions, gun rights should be no different.

It should be the default position of the government that a citizen over the age of majority should be allowed to have a firearm. However, the government should also be able to show good cause as to why someone should NOT be allowed to exercise that right. The mentally ill, convicted felons, spousal abusers – they all come to mind.

I find it fascinating, in a depressing way, that today’s conservative thinks that a convicted felon, upon release from prison, should NOT have the right to vote but SHOULD have their gun ownership rights restored!

“Well regulated” could be considered analagous to what we do with driving – you have to study up and take a test to prove you can handle exercising your rights. If you do something bad, like driving drunk, those rights are removed. And let’s not forget the militia part. Ok, so we don’t all have to enlist in the Army or National Guard – but consider how the military handles the situation of allowing their people to have firearms. It’s not like they hand out pistols at the induction hall.

Here’s the shocker. Most of the proposed gun restrictions have overwhelming support.

Check this article.

Look at the chart about 7 paragraphs in. It shows the following support:

Mental health restrictions: 87% support
Universal Background Checks: 81%
Require permit for concealed carry: 79%
Family-initiated Red Flag laws: 77%
Police-initiated Red Flag laws: 70%

The real shocker is that ALL of those proposals are supported by at least 2/3 of Republicans – with Mental Health, Background Checks and Family Red Flag laws drawing at or over 70% support.

Banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines still “net” over 60% support but Republicans drop off to under 40% for an assault weapon ban and just over 40% for banning high capacity magazines.

The desire for REASONABLE gun control is there. It’s the political will that’s missing.

Unless you’re suffering from mental illness, a spousal abuser or a violent felon, Democrats are NOT coming for your guns!

A Contract for Americans (6/10)

Legalize Marijuana and Reform Prison Policy

From January 2014 to July 2017, Colorado surpassed over a billion dollars in tax revenue from legalized marijuana. Washington was looking at over a quarter of a billion dollars per year back then and is now at over a half-billion collected in 2021 and California is over a billion and a quarter! Canada started to legalized it in 2018 and the citizens there want the tax revenues to go towards their national health care system instead of anti-drug campaigns. They got more than they asked for – in a good way. In the 3+ years since legalization, cannabis has added $43B to GDP, $15B in federal tax revenues and $3B just in Ontario. British Columbia is collecting $8M per month in excise taxes alone! (Note: $1 CDN = $0.78 USD as of this writing)

Now look at the fact that whites and blacks use drugs in almost the same percentages, yet blacks are arrested FAR more often. This mass incerceration is expensive and racist. Drug offenses make up 46% of the federal inmate population. We could save a lot of money (and ruin far fewer lives) with legalization. After all, alcohol is legal..

Which brings up the second part of this subject – the prisons themselves. Private prisons are an abomination. What started out as a way to save money has become a horror. Private prisons contract with the government and have minimum quotas on the number of prisoners. This means the state is guaranteeing a certain number of prisoners to the private company. This means the state has a vested interest in keeping people in prison – regardless of crime or guilt.

And they’re not even saving money. In Arizona, for FY 2010, the average per diem cost was $48.42 in public prisons vs. $53.02 per day in privately operated facilities. In 2019, Georgia’s private prisons cost $5.01 per inmate per day more than public prisons. That’s over $1,800/day more. In 2013, the nation’s largest private prison operator had a profit of $300M on revenues of $1.6B (about a 19% profit margin). This money went from taxpayers paying for the prisons to the CCA shareholders. Is that something we want to be doing? Keep in mind that private prisons pay their employees far less with fewer benefits than public employees. Oh, and not for nothing, I find it strange that prisoners, on average, spend more time in private prisons than in public ones. Adjusting to compare similar crimes, sentencing alone in private prisons averages 23 days more incarceration. On top of that, once in a private prison, inmates end up with more than twice as many infractions resulting in additional prison time (60 to 90 days), compared to public prisons.

This is unconscionable. Keeping people in prison longer so that companies can make more money. That’s not what I was taught about “The American Way”.

If I were emperor, private prisons would be banned.

A Contract For Americans (5/10)

Ending The Wars – Military Common Sense.

$5,000,000,000,000

That’s Five Trillion Dollars. That’s what the post 9/11 wars have cost us just through FY 2016 in my original “Contract” post and, with interest on the debt included, we were looking at $8T by 2053 if we don’t change our ways.

We hit $8T a lot sooner than 2053. In fact, we already hit it.

To link it to the previous subject – fixing everything on the list from the American Society of Civil Engineers would cost $2.5T more than we’re planning on spending. The ASCE is only too happy to list the details here.

You read that right. For less than half the cost of blowing things up and pissing off people all over the world, we could have more employment, better public facilities, smoother roads, stronger bridges and so much more.

In addition, we need to actually listen to our military leaders sometimes and remember what the military is for. It’s for defending the country – not a jobs program for defense contractors. For example, we have to stop buying tanks and other equipment that the armed forces do not want and do not need!

Thankfully, we’ve withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq – but we’re still stationing troops all over the world. To be fair, there’s some evidence that there’s value in that. Look at how Russia eyes the Baltics (Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia) who are NATO and EU members – but it’s Ukraine (members of neither) that ends up getting invaded. We have similar tensions with China over Taiwan. It’s hard to know how things would play out – and how much Chinese rhetoric is “just words” since their military could be somewhat hollow in some areas (they build aircraft carriers can’t but train enough pilots for them) while other areas seem pretty meaty.

A Contract For Americans (4/10)

Infrastructure – The Job That Keeps On Paying Off

You know, if we return to the tax policies that produced a surplus back in Clinton’s day, THIS would a good place to spend that money.

Roads, bridges, tunnels, levees, dams, water treatment facilities, sewers – all this stuff is falling apart. We need a LOT of construction workers making decent money working on these projects – and they’ll spend their salaries, growing the economy futher, aka “The Multiplier Effect”. The Congressional Research Service recently published a report stating that a 1% of GDP increase in public capital investment would increase labor demand by 1.13% in the short term – these would be those “good jobs at good wages” stuff that politicians like to talk about.

And there’s no lack of places needing that kind of money.

The American Society of Civil Engineers produces a Report Card on the state of our infrastructure. And in this “Best Nation On Earth”, what do you think we score?

At the time of this writing, a paltry “C-“. In the time that the ASCE has been doing this (2017 to the current 2021 report), we’ve gone, overall, from a “C” to a “D” to a “D+” before we improved to a “C-” last year. You can read the entire report here.

It’s pretty pathetic when our BEST grade is a “B” in Rail infrastructure. But that just grades what we have. It’s hard to grade something that doesn’t exist – like high-speed passenger rail the way you see it in Japan, France, China, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.

Our other grades? Here they are by category:
D-: Transit
D: Dams, Stormwater, Roads, and Levees
D+: Aviation, Hazardous Waste, Inland Waterways, Public Parks, Schools, and Wastewater
C-: Energy, Drinking Water
C: Bridges
C+: Solid Waste
B-: Ports

So what will it cost?

On page 7 of the Executive Summary (here) it says that our total needs are just.shy of $6 TRILLION and that $3.35 Trillion is funded, leaving a gap of $2.5 Trillion – but this IS over the course of 10 years (2020-2029, based on current trends). So that $2.5T gap is really around $250 Billion per year. That sounds like a lot until you find out that the Federal Budget includes between $700-$800 Billion EACH YEAR for the Defense Department and Social Security is laying out over $1.2 TRILLION each year.

How would we pay for it?

The original three trillion dollar proposal that the Biden Administration put out had several line items. In addition to the additional tax revenue from the benefits of infrastructure improvements there were 4 categories of “offsets”:

$640B from High Net Worth Individual tax increases: 3.8% net investment income tax increase ($250 billion). 5% surtax on income over $10 million and 8% surtax on income above $25 million (230 billion). Expanded limits on business loss deductions (160 billion).
$325B from Health Care changes and cost reductions: Reform Part D Medicare drug coverage, cap drug price growth and allow targeted drug price negotiations ($160 billion). Repeal drug rebate rule enacted by the Trump administration ($145 billion). Lower disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments to qualifying hospitals serving large numbers of Medicaid and uninsured individuals beyond 2025 (20 billion).
$180B from “Additional Revenues”: Fund the IRS to reduce the tax gap ($130 billion). Reinstate oil superfund taxes and impose a methane fee ($20 billion). Expand nicotine taxes (10 billion). Reform tax treatment of retirement accounts ($10 billion). Other receipts ($10 billion).
$825 from Corporate taxes: 15% corporate minimum tax on large corporations earning more than $1 billion in profits (raising $320 billion). 15% global minimum tax and reform international taxation (raising $280 billion). Levy a 1% surcharge on stock buybacks, which is the amount that companies spend to repurchase shares (raising $125 billion). Enact other corporate tax reforms (raising $105 billion)

There’s about $2T there and it doesn’t raise a penny on most people. And before you talk about the corporate taxes being passed on, that’s not the government. Corporations are making record profits – meaning profits unlike ANYTHING they’ve seen in history. If they hike prices – remember – the taxes are on PROFITS – so they are saying “We need to keep our billions so we’re hiking our prices”.

Remember. Back when our infrastructure WAS the best in the world, the top marginal tax rate on the wealthy and corporations was 91%. So I don’t believe for a minute that hiking taxes a few percent is going to cause an exodus. It didn’t happen before when the same threat was made. After all, they pleaded for the Trump tax cuts saying it would create jobs and it simply didn’t. The money went to CEOs, for stock buybacks enriching shareholders, and even foreign investors. Shouldn’t have been a surprise. That’s what happened with the Bush tax cuts.

Think of it in fantasy terms. “Listen – if we just give the dragon more money for his hoard, SURELY he’ll invest it and we’ll all prosper!”.

Yes, collecting taxes to spend on infrastructure IS “Socialism”. But the best definition I ever heard of Socialism is:

We, The People.…

A Contract For Americans (3/10)

Public University Education For All – Trade Schools Included

We’ve gone more than a century with compulsory, free public education being made for all. The benefits of an educated public are too numerous to mention. But there are plenty of people out there who’ve studied this.

This article fleshes out a Top Ten list:

Creating More Employment Opportunities
Securing a Higher Income
Developing Problem-Solving Skills
Improving The Economy
Providing a Prosperous and Happy Life
Giving Back to the Community
Creating a Modern Society
Bridging the Borders
Creating Equal Opportunities
Introducing Empowerment

Some of the above “Duh..”-level but you can dig deeper and find more unexpected benefits. This article has a list that overlaps the previous one but also includes:

Healthier lifestyle (and longer lifespan)
Experimentation and Diversity
Socializing and Networking
Pursuing Your Passion
Personal Skill Development
Environmental and Social Benefits

There are SO many ways that education benefits people – but that last one above – Social Benefits? This article (again, while overlapping some) points out some more benefits that should make the news:

Overall Poverty Reduction
Discourages Crime
Reduces gender-based violence
Reduces child marriage
Reduces maternal death rates.

And that’s just the start.

So it begs the question… Ages ago, we decided that primary school wasn’t enough and we funded education for all through high school. Now, 70 years ago, you could get a decent job with a high school education – but that’s not the ticket it used to be. You need a college education – or so we’re told. Personal experience has shown me that trade schools should be included in that. We may need more doctors, nurses and engineers, but we don’t need more MBAs. What we DO need are more carpenters, auto mechanics, electricians, plumbers, general contractors and the like.

So why are we not paying for college? We have public universities in every state. It used to be easy to pay for college – but not anymore. We have 4 times more student loan debt than auto loan debt. Remember the cries over all the credit card debt we have? Student loan debt is more than TWICE as much. ….and it’s not getting any better. And it doesn’t get easier for students once they get out because:

Graduates are usually just starting their careers and make well under the average salary – so the debt burden is high – like carrying a mortgage except you don’t have a house backing it up.
Even bankruptcy won’t help. Students with private student loans were stripped of their bankruptcy protection in 2005. (Federal student loans became non-dischargeable in 1976)

Why are we burdening our most inexperience but promising young workers with debt? The idea would be ludicrous for elementary, middle and high-school. Now, with so many other countries providing free public university education, it’s ludicrous now, here, in what’s supposed to the Greatest Nation on Earth.

So over the past few years, a few people started pushing the idea. It started to gain traction when Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders started promoting it. Free tuition at public (not private) universities. Radical? Not if you live in Europe. Germany and almost 40 other countries offer their citizens free (or almost free) university educations (sometimes there are some small fees). There are even 9 countries which will let Americans attend for free or with a nominal fee. Think about that. Germany, France and Iceland will do, for OUR kids what WE WILL NOT DO!

But what about here? Would it work here? IT ALREADY HAS.

California used to offer free tuition to it’s in-state students. This was their policy until the 1970s. Some colleges in New York were also free – again, into the 1970s.

Sanders said we could pay for this program by instituting a 0.5% tax on stock trades. How much would that be? Well, it could raise $350 BILLION per year over the next several years. That pays for a LOT of college. And the impact? You’re talking about $5 for every $1000 worth of stocks, bonds or derivatives traded. A small price to pay to have more engineers and doctors paying into Social Security versus “gig economy extras”.

That we are trying to profit off of our children is CRIMINAL. That we are stifling their opportunity based on an ability to pay is REPREHENSIBLE. And we only hurt our country in the process.

A Contract For Americans (2/10)

Medicare For All – Saving money on our biggest bill

Right now, the United States spends nearly $12,000 per person on health care. That’s 65% more than Switzerland and 71% more than Germany. However, we spend $5,790 per person (including partial benefit enrolees) on Medicaid. Think about that for a minute.. We pay about HALF the amount for health care for our citizens who are, by and large, requiring the most health care. (Side note – Medicare is mostly age-based and for the elderly, Medicaid is run by the states and based on income more like an anti-poverty and disability program).

And what do we get for our money? The average life expectancy in the US is now 76.6 years in 2021, down from 78.8 in 2019. Think that sounds good? In Japan, it’s 85 years overall, with 88 years for women. What do you think Japan pays for healthcare. It’s $4,961. We’re paying 2.4 TIMES what Japan pays and 10% less ‘life’ for all that expense.

So how about Medicare-for-all? Think we can’t pay for it? Well we’re already PAYING more than double so we’d be SAVING money! ….and we could END the abomination that ONLY exists in THIS country known as “Medical Bankruptcy”.

As of 2019 (before some Medicare financial juggling was done), we spent $796 billion on Medicare. It’s really hard to nail down what Medicare-for-all would cost per-person. We know that covering the elderly costs ABOUT the national average ($12,000) but that’s also the demographic that needs the most services. The whole idea of insurance is to spread the risk. So maybe using Japan as an example isn’t 100% fair – after all, they have a different lifestyle and MUCH healthier food habits (which could be a topic for another post). What about the UK? The UK spends just over $4,400 per capita for their NHS and they have a life expectancy of over 81 years. Or how about Canada? At $4,402 per person and a life expectancy of 82 years, what are they doing right that we’re doing wrong? Single-payer health care.

An example? Over the past couple of years, my wife and I have needed MRIs. First we had to get them approved by the insurance company. My wife needed to go through TEN MONTHS of useless, ineffective therapy because the doctors couldn’t diagnose her problems – TWICE – that the MRIs, when finally approved found INSTANTLY. In my case, I “only” had to go through 4 months of therapy before my therapist angrily went to bat for me to get an MRI because her therapies weren’t having an effect (I had a stress fracture in my leg that an X-Ray didn’t see and my wife had ligament damage in her shoulders and ankle). Keep in mind that I have GOOD health insurance that costs $20,000/year in premiums (between ‘my’ share and my employer’s share). …and that’s before all the deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket exceptions.

When I saw the bill? It was over $5,500 for the MRI. Reduced in price over $1,000 for the insurance company but still left me with a $600 deductible/co-pay (remember, we waited MONTHS for this IN PAIN). However the RETAIL price for an MRI (which isn’t covered by Quebec’s health care plan but CAN be covered by an MRA) outside of Montreal is $501.29 USD. Why my insurance company doesn’t put me on a bus to Quebec and save a couple thousand dollars, I don’t know. That’s the WALK-IN price. …and they don’t hide it. Try to get that from an American clinic.

We need to examine whether or not the profit motive should be paramount in health care.

Also, keep this in mind – we pay more for the same prescription drugs compared to other countries. WAY more.. You can look at per-capita spending. You can look at drug prices themselves. Many of those drugs are manufactured here in the US and shipped overseas. Even if it’s just next door in Canada. You could look at India. You can look at Europe.

That we allow this profligate spending for the benefit of health insurance and drug company shareholders is stunning.

Medicare-for-all would save a BOATload of money. The people making billions off of other people’s misery would have to just sit on those billions. Doctors and nurses wouldn’t have to fight with every different insurance company – the savings in standardization alone (only having to have one set of records) would be immense.

Oh – and those clerks and other line workers who would be out of work at those insurance companies? They can be hired at HHS to help administrate Medicare and Medicaid with the influx of millions of new subscribers. I’m sympathetic to them. They aren’t the ones making my wife go through years of pain. They aren’t the ones screwing us over.

Every other industrialized country does this better than we do. It’s just another example of how those who sloganeer about the US being the best country in the world have their head in the sand.

Medicare-for-all. Do you think I’d trade $20,000 in premiums for a 4% income tax? The math says it’s a no-brainer. It gives workers a raise, saves employers money and covers the less-fortunate. It ought to be a law that, on your pay stub, you not only see how much YOU pay for health insurance but your employer’s part as well (typically from more than twice to four times as much as the most common splits are 80/20 or 70/30).

Medicare-for-all. Do you think we’d have more trust in doctors if we didn’t have to avoid them because of the cost? Do you think we’d be healthier if we got health care sooner rather than waiting until the pain is too much? What do you think the ramifications are if we went to medical professionals instead of Google?

Who stands to profit if we don’t? Insurance companies.

Who stands to profit (and live longer) if we do? We The People.

A Contract for Americans (Redux)

An updated and fleshed-out version of my previous proposal.

Four years ago, I wanted to do something different when it came to political discussion. I wanted to be more positive. There was so much “NO!” going around and I noticed that there wasn’t a lot of talk about what people were actually in favor of.

Over time, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of individual issues that, when you poll Americans on them separately, you find out we agree a LOT more than people these days are led to believe. So I took a page out of the Republican’s book when they did their “Contract for America” in 1994 and decided to come up with my OWN “Contract”. I modified the title, a little, because I wanted to highlight that it was for Americans. More specifically, the people. And there I put 10 things that I’d like to see politicians sign their name to. 10 things that I thought individually could be boiled down into sound bites and 30-second spots. Each policy would part of a greater whole but would do it’s best to be “digestible” so that your eyes didn’t glaze over…

Cut to today… With all the gridlock in Washington and all the other gloom and doom that seems to permeate the atmosphere, I decided to dig out that old post and freshen it up a bit. This time, though, I was going to go into more detail in order to explain my reasons, show more examples, bring it up to date, etc. Because of that, I’m going to split it up into one post for each of the Contract’s major points.

If you didn’t see the original version or don’t want to click back to there, here’s a “Table of Contents” for what’s coming and I’ll activate links as I publish the individual posts:

Yes, this one goes to ’11’… Consider this a “0 of 11” post.